Nutanix Private Cloud Disaster Recovery

Service Overview

Nutanix Private Cloud Disaster Recovery (DRaaS) is a Nutanix-powered platform that allows you to recover Nutanix hosted workloads on dedicated, enterprise-class hardware in the event of a disaster without the burden of maintaining the infrastructure. Expedient maintains the hardware platform, software updates, licensing, and ongoing maintenance as a managed service. Clients have full admin access to their virtual machines, along with the ability to perform many of the same operations as their on-premises Nutanix environment.

Service Features

• Dedicated hardware platform per client

• Supports replication to and from Nutanix AHV or client-owned ESXi to Expedient AHV

• Pay per host for resources + per VM for fully managed disaster recovery

• Encryption-at-rest and in-flight

• Protection groups for grouping applications

• 24x7x365 support for declaring disasters and initiating failovers

• Prism Central access to manage multiple clusters and locations

• REST API and CLI for management access and automation

• Native replication and disaster recovery using Nutanix Disaster Recovery

  • To and from Nutanix clusters in Expedient Nutanix Private Cloud

  • To and from on-premises Nutanix clusters to Expedient Nutanix Private Cloud

• Two-factor authentication

• Multiple RPO options available

  • 15-minute RPO (NearSync)

  • 1 Hour RPO (Async)

Licensing

Expedient’s Nutanix Private Cloud comes with NCI Ultimate and NCM Starter.

Disaster recovery features are under the “NCI” or Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure feature set.

See Nutanix Cloud Platform Software Options for more details.

Disaster Recovery Implications

For clients with their own Nutanix cluster replicating to an Expedient Nutanix Private Cloud:

• If your cluster has NCI Ultimate, you will have full access to the disaster recovery suite.

• If your cluster has NCI Starter, will not have access to the full disaster recovery suite and are limited to Protection Domains on Prism Element.

• If your cluster has NCI Pro, you can use asynchronous replication (≥ 1 Hour RPO) on Prism Central or;

  • You can purchase the Adv Replication add-on license

Matching Features and Licensing

While Expedient clusters have NCI Ultimate, replication must be configured to match the licensing level of your Nutanix cluster.

• The Advanced Replication add-on enables Advanced Orchestration, Multiple Boot Stages, Script Execution, Re-IP, Test Failover), NearSync Replication (RPO = 1-15 minute).

• Starter and Pro licensing can do Async Replication (1 Hour RPO) but cannot perform test failovers.

Client Experience Expectations

Clients will connect their on-premises clusters to Expedient via VPN, which will provide the path for replication to the Nutanix cluster on the Expedient side. Clients will use login through OneLogin to Prism Central to access the platform, view replication status, and run recovery runbooks to test and execute a workload failover.

Expedient will monitor replication jobs, availability of the platform, hardware status, resource utilization through Prism Central metrics and alert the client via SMC ticket.

Expedient will support failover from on-premises clusters to Expedient clusters and can perform the failover for a client on their behalf. Expedient will troubleshoot failovers and ensure the recovery completes successfully.

Support Summary

• Expedient-owned Nutanix Private Cloud as a Source

  • Expedient will configure discovery on private cloud instances, including:

    • Site Pairing to and from Expedient-owned private cloud instances

    • Configuration of Recovery Plans to orchestrate restoring protected VMs at a secondary location

    • Configuration of Protection Polices to automate the creation and replication of snapshots across all the clusters managed by Prism Central

      • Default – Async with a 3-day retention with Rollup selected. This will create 24 hourly snapshots, and 3 daily snapshots.

    • Assign categories to the VMs that should be protected to default Nutanix categories.

Default Deployment Settings

Available in all Expedient locations with two options:

1) Private Cloud with Unmanaged Disaster Recovery

• Client is responsible for disaster recovery setup (replication, protection groups, etc)

• Expedient will manage and maintain hardware, hypervisor, and Prism Central

2) Fully Managed Disaster Recovery as a Service

• In addition to managing and maintaining hardware, hypervisor, and Prism Central, Expedient will assist with disaster recovery setup including configuring replication, setting up protection policies, and recovery plans.

  Protection Policies

  Multiple policies can be configured. If you have tiered applications, for example, you could create a separate category (along with the appropriate VMs) and add it to a different stage

• Expedient will monitor replication jobs and alert clients via SMC ticket on issues

• Networking will be configured for failover between Expedient locations

• Clients will be given access and authenticate to Prism Central

  • Clients can also contact the OSC to initiate a test failover or declare an actual disaster

• Clients are provided a Disaster Recovery runbook outlining the steps to execute a failover operation to be incorporated with a larger DR or Business Continuity plan

• Clients that declare a disaster or commit to a failover operation, will be asked to reside in secondary site for a period of time for reverse replication to complete successfully, typically 24- 48 hours depending on the size and change rate of the environment.

• Data protection and monitoring services will be reestablished after a failover AND commit to the secondary site longer than 48-hour timeframe.

• Client user directory (i.e. Active Directory) will be configured for authentication

  For Client-owned Nutanix Private Cloud as a Source

  • Ensure availability and health of Expedient-owned target site.

  • Monitor target-side Availability Zone connectivity

  • Assist in the DR configuration on client site.

    • Default guidance and best practices will be provided.

• DR Testing

  • Nutanix DR failover options are "Planned Failover", "Unplanned Failover", and "Test Failover".

  • Nutanix offers non-disruptive testing referred to as Validating a Recovery Plan, and an Unplanned Failover / Disruptive Test option.

    • Expedient will conduct DR testing on Expedient-owned Nutanix Private Cloud upon request.

    • Expedient will assist in DR testing for client-owned Nutanix source cluster upon request.

    • Clients may contact Expedient to schedule a test and at least one non-disruptive test is recommended near the end of the delivery phase.

Recovery Workflows

There are multiple options clients can use to perform a disaster recovery of your workloads.

1. Clients can perform their own recoveries by following this procedure:

   1. Nutanix Disaster Recovery pc.2024.3.1 - Performing a Planned Failover, or:

   2. Nutanix Disaster Recovery pc.2024.3.1 - Performing an Unplanned Failover

2. Clients can contact Expedient's Operations Support Center and Expedient can perform the failover on the client's behalf.

Responsibility and Accountability Matrix

More Information

Nutanix Private Cloud Service Overview